Projects: Statewide Multi-Pathway Risk Assessment
Historically, the states have focused on air toxics from point sources. Risk evaluations of air emissions were completed only for new and expanding facilities, such as incineration units. These evaluations typically are time consuming, resource intensive, and focused on plants that tended to have the latest and best pollution control technology for air toxics. Citizens, during public meetings for these facilities, have questions about the potential impacts from proposed plants, and also the overall cumulative impacts from existing pollutants in the air.
To facilitate a systematic, more objective way of understanding and addressing impacts from emissions of air toxics the states regulators need a tool to integrate all types of source information, reported emissions from those sources, chemical information (i.e., how a chemical moves through the environment, its toxicity) as well as physical and meteorological data. States also needed to be able to assess potential impacts on a geographical scale smaller than county level, to look at the impact from all emissions and chemicals at a particular point in space, and to include impacts from multi-pathway exposure (direct inhalation, milk, water, eggs, poultry, beef, pork, etc.).
Lakes Environmental, Inc. (Lakes Environmental) developed this challenging methodology and created an advanced Information Technology (IT) solution to evaluate this concept. This tool has been created and used in a State within the USA and its results will be published in the near future.
StateRisk View will be used as a foundation in developing its statewide air toxic program. Its specific use includes:
1. Conduct risk-based prioritizations such as evaluating and comparing impacts from source types or industrial sectors
2. Identifying areas where specific chemicals are of concern; or compare differences in impacts, and thus possible actions, in different areas of a State
3. Provide for cost-effective determinations of the impact of proposed changes. For instance, regulators can now evaluate the impact of implementing control technologies across a sector or to determine the impact at a neighborhood level of a proposed new plant in relation to present impacts
4. Complement air toxic monitoring program
5. Identify most impacted pathway, such as eggs or beef.
StateRisk View Benefits
StateRisk View was developed to provide an easy-to-use, robust system to facilitate screening level human health risk assessments of sites located within States. The GIS-enabled IT system incorporates sources from the most current emissions inventory data for point, area, and mobile sources. StateRisk View contains an emissions inventory management system that allows the creation and processing of air dispersion modeling across the entire state. Air dispersion modeling results are then used in conjunction with additional geophysical GIS data to perform state-wide multi-source, multi-pathway risk assessment enabling cumulative studies on a previously unattainable scale.
StateRisk View was designed to conduct more refined analyses related to risk results by:
- Individual sources
- Source types
- Industrial sector
- Chemicals
- Demographics data
StateRisk View was created to meet the following modeling objectives:
- Standard and repeatable assessment of human health risk from multiple air toxic emission sources, from multiple sites.
- Calculation and tracking of exposures and risks from thousands of sources.
- Prioritization of emissions sources and emitted air toxics for further analysis, based on relative highest risk.
Implementation of Proven Technologies
State-wide cumulative risk assessment must incorporate tested and accepted methodologies and technologies. StateRisk View is driven by standard U.S. EPA air dispersion models and risk assessment protocols. These tools are further extended through the implementation of proven GIS technologies in use by thousands of software licenses around the world. The management of the vast Minnesota emissions data is handled through Emissions View, a powerful and widely accepted emissions inventory and estimation system. These methodologies and technologies are outlined in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 - Standard methodologies and tested technologies implemented in StateRisk View.
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